Billy Corgan buys a piece of the Gold Coast
UPPER BRACKET.
April 14, 2002|By Bob Goldsborough. Special to the Tribune.

Ten months after selling his Victorian painted lady mansion in Lake View for $1 million, former Smashing Pumpkins lead singer and chief songwriter Billy Corgan has paid $2.95 million for a recently renovated, historic six-room condominium on the Gold Coast.

After disbanding the Smashing Pumpkins, Corgan formed a new group, Zwan, which is playing three sold-out shows at the Double Door this weekend.

Through his tour manager, Corgan declined to comment on the purchase of the two-bedroom condo. His tour manager confirmed that the singer-songwriter recently has been staying at the condo while rehearsing for Zwan's current tour, but said the Chicago-area native ultimately intends to lease the condo in a 110-year-old building to someone else. The unit has an oak-paneled living room, reception room, balcony framed by granite columns, four fireplaces, walnut parquet floors and a large terrace.

Corgan has shown an affinity for vintage properties. After moving out of the more than 100-year-old Lake View home at 3448 N. Greenview Ave., which he owned from 1993 to 2001, Corgan temporarily stayed in a penthouse in the Haberdasher Square loft development, 728 W. Jackson Blvd., a former manufacturing building that dates to 1926. And in 2000, the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois awarded Corgan its President's Award for his commitment to historic preservation.

Since Corgan sold his Lake View home, one Smashing Pumpkins Web site reported that he has been living in Italy, but in interviews he has declined any comment on his permanent residence.

Singer Courtney Love, whom Corgan dated many years ago, just sold her loft in downtown Manhattan for $3 million after buying it for $2.6 million in January 2001, according to the New York Post. The loft is in the same building where rocker Lenny Kravitz just listed his own, five-bedroom, 7,000-square-foot, multilevel loft for $16 million, after buying the space unfinished in October 2000 for $8 million, the Post reported.

Love also recently listed her almost 3,700-square-foot Spanish-style house on Los Angeles' Westside -- which she bought last June for $3 million -- for about the same price, according to the Los Angeles Times. Love reportedly is looking for another house in the area because her five-bedroom house, which was built in the 1920s, is too small.

Ironically, Love told the Times last year that she sold a four-bedroom, 4,700-square-foot French country-style house on almost 2 acres in the Hollywood Hills -- which she had purchased from Ellen DeGeneres in 1997 for about $3 million -- because she was planning to spend more time in New York and actually wanted something smaller in L.A. She sold the Hollywood Hills home for $3.995 million in March 2001 to British businessman Mike Walley. Love's former Hollywood Hills house made the news in November 2001, after Paul McCartney's fellow Beatle George Harrison died. After Harrison's representatives gave a bogus L.A. address on his death certificate, the county's district attorney revealed in February that Harrison actually had died at Walley's house.

Rocker Tom Petty has paid close to $2.5 million for a three-bedroom oceanfront home in Malibu, Calif., according to the Los Angeles Times. Built in 1974, the house has three fireplaces, Malibu tiles and a courtyard with a fountain, the paper reported ... Fred Durst, frontman for the rock group Limp Bizkit, has sold a house he never moved into in Bel Air, Calif., for $3.7 million because it had "vibes that were not quite correct for him," according to the Los Angeles Times. Last fall, Durst bought the four-bedroom, 6,600-square-foot house, which was once owned by the Doors' Robbie Krieger and has a carving of the Doors playing on one wall, for just under $4 million, the paper reported. Durst recently bought a house with a sound studio in L.A.'s Hollywood Hills, and has listed that home for $1.4 million, the Times reported.